BBC To Launch Free News & Sports iPhone Apps

The BBC will be launching two applications for the iPhone OS in April to offer a more intuitive and user friendly experiments to the million of iPhone and iPod Touch users who use the platform to get news and sport content.

Both of them will be free and we expect the BBC Sport iPhone App to be particularly popular with the BBC promising live coverage of the 2010 World Cup that will take place in June 2010. Sky Sports Live is currently 23rd in Apple's Top Free App list in the UK

It will even offer on demand video footage of all the goals scored during the tournament and will pull content from the BBC Sport website as well as from 4 Live Radio.

The BBC Sport App will also cover formula 1 later this year and Blackberry and Android versions are also said to be in the pipeline. One can expect Windows Phone 7, Symbian and Meego variants to be released in due time.

A BBC News App will also be offered and will dispense both audio, video and text content together with breaking news, features and indepth analysis.

The BBC has also confirmed that there will be an international version which will generate revenue for the corporation through advertising and there are plans to introduce an iPlayer application for the iPhone.

As expected, BBC is steamrolling forward and trying to put its content on as many screens and as many platforms as possible. One might say that it is to justify the £142.50 annual levy (otherwise known as the TV licence) we pay every year. Anyhow, better late than never.